Tarrow: Democracy and Disorder

Introduction
Three main ways of dealing with the movement of the 1960s:
1) repulsion by the disorder, aberration from capitalism's progress towards abundance
2) focus on social actors involved in the conflict: focus on individual attitudes (Inglehart 1971,
1977)
3) 'new social movements': new paradigm growing out of late capitalist society (Offe 1985).
Overestimated the novelty of the movements, underestimated the symbiosis with old
politics.
All lack empirical evidence!
Guiding assumption: The movement was significant, because it signalled deeper changes in Western
societies and their repertoires of action.
I. The sixties: A cycle of protest
What happened in Western Europe and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s was, I shall
argue, but the latest in a sequence of cycles of protest that grow periodically out of the basic
conflicts of capitalist society. Though the content of the cycle was new as were, to some extent, its
actors and forms of action it followed a parabola simliar to that of past waves of mobilization.
Conservatives might find it full of dangers, but if it followed the logic of past cycles from rupture
to institutionalization, from struggle to reform then it would have a positive effect on the
democracy that it claimed to defend.
[Schon einige Punkte:
1) Fokus auf die Gesamtheit von Bewegung
2) Bewegungserfolg wird am (liberalen?) Kriterium der Verbesserung der Demokratie
gemessen]
These observations make clear that it is futile to study movements apart from their political context
or detached from the cycle of protest of which they are a part. For although a particular group's
grievance might stem from its structural position, its political actions and the reactions to them are
conditioned by political factors: by which other groups were protesting at the same time, by the
repressive capacities or facilitative strategies of elites, by the potential allies that are available in the
political system, and, most important, by the general level of mobilization of the population. []
The movements have to be seen as part of the general cycle of protest in which the arise. (4)
combination of new and old elements, of movement and institution is responsible for success (or
lack thereof).
II. Why study Italy and why analyse protest?
France/Paris is remembered as center of the 1960s protest, but in Italy, the cycle started earlier, was
more prolonged and affected society more profoundly.
Students of democracy have been obsessed by the apparent lack of stability in Italian politics. But
while the effects of disorder on democracy can be lethal, we should not make the mistake of
concluding that stability is either the most important aspect of democracy or that as some students
of democratic theory maintain it is democracy tout court. A democracy in which disorder was
impossible would be no democracy at all. (6f.)

 The protests left the country with a broadened repertoire of participation and a new political
culture: It was beneficial to the country.
Fewer scholars have looked systematically at the forms of political action and at how these have
evolved over time. Yet unless we trace the forms of activity people use, how these reflect their
demands, and their interaction with opponents and elites, we cannot understand either the
magnitude or the dynamics of change in politics and society. (7f)
[Dieser Punkt ist fr die Arbeit wichtig! Siehe Entwurf]
Pattern of conflict cycle: (8)
conventional patterns of conflict within existing organizations and institutions [DAS PASST
IM FALLE IRLANDS NUR EINGESCHRNKT: WIR SOLLTEN EHER VON
DISKURSIV WIRKUNGSLOSEN AKTIONSFORMEN AUSGEHEN]
new actors use expressive and confrontational forms of action [SPRINGENDER PUNKT:
DIE BLOCKADEN WERDEN PERFEKT ERFASST]
Demonstrating that the system is vulnerable to disruption, common grievances
expanding range of contention to new sectors and institutions, but without the confrontation
or the excitement of early risers. [GROSSDEMONSTRATIONEN,
PARTEIENPLATTFORM, ...]
Deliberate violence, as mobilization declines.
Definition: I shall define protest as the use of disruptive collective action aimed at institutions,
elites, authorities, or other groups, on behalf of the collective goals of the actors or of those they
claim to represent. In other words, I regard protest, not as a category of action distinct from more
institutionalized forms of political expression, but as an extreme form of such expression that, like
the others, is the outcome of a calculus of risk, cost, and incentive. (8)
[The definition focuses on the rationality of protest behavior against attempts to paint them as
merely irrational and chaotic. However, this tends to overestimate the strategic capacity of social
movement actors: We can introduce elements of contingency without delegitimizing them.]
A protest cycle occurs, not when a few people are willing to take extraordinary risks for extreme
goals, but when the costs of collective action are so low and the incentives so great that even
individuals or groups that would normally not engage in protest feel encouraged to do so. This
focuses our attention not on macrostructural causes, but on the political conditions in which the
cycle begins: on splits among elites, on the growing resources of marginal people, on the diffusion
of new frames of meaning within the society
[While the first part is still plausible, the second part seems to be outdated. Marginalization, elite
splits and new frames are all clearly relevant for the old NSMs, this new cycle of protest might have
new incentives (perceived deprivation, blurred political arena (Ireland/EU), de-democratization, ]
III. The plan of the study
Chapter 1: Schematic summary
(likens protest cycles to business cycles)

1 POLITICS AND PROTEST CYCLES

What needs to be explained is not why people periodically petition, strike, demonstrate riot, loot,
and burn, but rather why so many of them do so at particular times in their history, and if there is a
logical sequence to their actions. (13)
In this study, I shall argue that people go out into the streets and protest in response to deeply felt
grievances and opportunities. But this produces a protest cycle only when structural cleavages are
both deep and visible and when political opportunities for mass protest are opened up by the
political system. (13)
I. Essential Concepts
Five main components of the definition of protest:
1. Protests are direct, not representative, collective actions
2. Protests aim primarily at disruption, not specifically at violence
3. Protests are expressive. Demands are symbolically charged.
4. Protests involve claims
5. Protesters are strategic in their choice of issues, targets and goals.
II. Social movement sector
We shall refer to the configuration of individuals and groups willing to engage in disruptive direct
action against others to achieve collective goals as the social movement sector. The movement
sector increases and decreases in size as a cycle unfolds. (16f)
Social movement := organised, sustained, self-conscious challenge to existing authorities (Tilly
1984: 304)
Collective action is a resources that social movement organizers use in place of conventional
incentives.
Although movements often use protest to gain advantage, advantage should not be seen in
narrowly economic terms, but as instrumental to the broader interest a movement organization has
in establishing itself, in maintaining its internal cohesion and external reputation, and in
distinguishing itself from its enemies and competitors. (18)
It is the interaction among mass mobilization, movement organizers, and traditional associations
that produces a cycle of protest. (18)
III.Tactical innovation and competitive mobilization
Competition between SMOs under conditions of changing general levels of mobilization is seen as
a major cause for the evolution of forms of action.
IV. The repertoire of collective action
Repertoire of contention : actual variety of collective actions and their development over time
(Charles Tilly)
Height of protest cycle is the moment, when innovation in the tactical repertoire is at its highest.

V. Structure of political opportunity

On its own, structural change only creates the objective potential for movements and cannot
overcome the personal inertia nor develop the networks and solidarities necessary to mount group
action. (21, also: Klandermans and Tarrow 1988)
In order to lead to social movements, protest potential must be translated into action. This can take
organized form, as existing groups engage in 'consensus mobilization' or incite people to action
(Klandermans 1988); it can take spontaneous form, as protest grows out of conflicts within
institutions; but it is primarily political opportunities that 'translate' protest potential into action.
(21f.)
1. Extent to which form political institutions are open or closed to participation by groups on
the margins of the polity and the presence or absence of repression
2. Stability of political alignments (indicated by electoral instability)
3. Conflicts within and among elites
Which mechanisms translate political opportunities into action:
resources: sympathetic press, political parties, conscience constituents,
encourages unrepresented groups, because costs of insurgency have been lowered.
Helps to detect vulnerabilities
VI. Frames of meaning
Snow & Bedford: A major feature of a protest cycle [] is that a few traditional interpretative
frames are diffused throughout society and develop beyond their usual frame of meaning.
GENERAL OVERVIEW:
Part One: Parabolas of Protest:
Sources of Protest
Repertoire of Contention
Actors, Enemies and the State
Claims and Counterclaims
Part Two: Movements and Institutions
Early Risers: The Student Movement
Organizing Spontaneity: The worker's movement
The oldest new movement (religious movements)
In this chapter, we shall illustrate this point [even old movements reveal a combination of
conventional and innovative forms of action] by turning to the oldest movement of all:
religious movements. If we can show that even such an old movement is re-'newed' during a
protest cycle in ways that resemble new social movements, we shall have demonstrated the
power of a protest cycle to diffuse mobilization to the most traditional sectors of a modern
society. (195)

Part Three: Organizers and Movements

9 The extraparliamentary groups: Diffusion, Organization, Competition
Before we begin to analyse the institutionalization of social movements, we must first be aware of
the role that organization plays in their formation and diffusion. If a social movement arises
spontaneously, then organizations may indeed be an institutionalizing force as they try to take it

over and channel it. But what of movements that are the product of mobilization campaigns led by
organizations? (220)
a)
Three different ways of organization presence:
1) in the institutional context ('host' organizations)
2) through external groups
3) through the form that action takes.
b)
Organizations are crucial to movement diffusion.
c)
competition between social movement organizations:
ideological, for media coverage, for supporters:
The process of competitive tactical innovation by social movement organizations, I shall argue, is
a major force in the diffusion of protest. (221)
I. Diffusion
Processes of spontaneous diffusion:
imitation
comparison (learning of victories of similar groups)
transfer of tactics from one sector to another
direct reaction of one group to actions of another adversarial group
Purposive diffusion:
The forms of protest that have been described above sometimes arose spontaneously, but they did
not leap automatically crom sector to sector or from region to region. They were most often diffused
by organizers using the experiences and organizational skills they had acquired in the course of
earlier campaigns to give force and consistency to protest in others. (225)
diffusion by interest group
diffusion within host institutions
(often against said institution's will)
diffusion by movement organizations
most dramatic means
II. Diffusion by communication
The bourgeois media
The movement press
III. The extraparliamentary left
Organization was the outcome of crisis and opportunity: The movement's spontaneous tactics
were in crisis, mobilization declined, while at the same time, many in the movement sensed an
opportunity to organize radicalized workers.
IV. Organization as process
But the movement organizations could not simply shift from one social group to the other without
some cost, and those which attempted to do so without organizing for it either disappeared or
degenerated into ideological sects. Groups that wanted to make serious assaults against the unions
needed to combine the student movement's enthusiasm with the workers' discipline. This realization
had a powerful impact on the forms of organization they chose. (235)
The most successful organizations were decentralized and provisional, leaving great scope for
factions and uncontrolled violence to develop. (236)

Organization helped in competition with other groups. Three main axes:

1) Competing with the party system
Both with the PCI (which was very much alive) and with the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale
Italiano
2) Between movements and the unions
3) Within the radical left
VI. Conclusion
The extraparliamentary groups never seriously threatened capitalist hegemony or state power.
Their real function for the cycle of protest was to dare to confront both the unions and the party
system, on the one hand, and the authorities, on the other, with increasingly provocative forms of
collective action. In doing so, they helped to diffuse a culture of protest throughout Italian society
and to keep the unions and the left-wing parties attuned to the grievances of their constituencies.
Without intending it they spurred reform and the institutionalization of conflict. (240)
That goes for both, factories and 'the city' with its slum-dwellers.
But the extraparliamentary groups also had a less positive function for the cycle of protest. Their
militants were increasingly engaged not only in attempts to help the poor and oppose the parties and
unions, but in ferocious ideological and physical conflicts with one another and against symbols of
bourgeois hegemony. [] As mass protest retreated from the major sectors of Italian society and
institutionalization took hold, the extraparliamentary groups took their ideological conflicts to the
streets. Struggles between people replaced conflict over interests. (241)
the next two chapters trace the development of one specific group from 1966 to 1973.
From organization to movement
From movement to party